By Ruth Jarmen.
Reflection and thoughts...
One night a couple of months ago, my six-year-old daughter Sophie was sent to hospital with a asthma attack complicated with double pneumonia. It was one of those times when everything else falls away and all that mattered was that my Sophie got better. She got a lot worse to begin with and then better, and then she went rather rapidly and unexpectedly down hill again. She was moved to the Close Observation Unit where she was attached to seven tubes and wires pumping steroids and antibiotics into her veins, monitoring her heart rhythm, her breathing, the level of O2 in her bloodstream. Monday night was a long night. She didn't seem to be responding to the treatment. The alarm on the O2 monitor kept going off. I knew she was on pretty much maximum treatment for her condition and we just had to wait and see if she responded. There was nothing I could do but wait and pray. And it all worked! She recovered over the next few days and was painting in bed and jumping on a trampoline and hopscotching down the corridors.
Earth is also under close observation: thousands of scientists are monitoring her breathing of CO2, her vital signs, her ability to support life. Nothing else matters anymore. The diagnosis has been made by the earth's doctors. The medicine has been prescribed. But the scientists alone are powerless to administer the medicine. The world is waiting for humanity to administer the treatment. We can and must do more than wait and pray. We can do something and we must do something with urgency, with passion - we must throw ourselves into this. We must demand from our weak, ineffective government, tossed back and forth by the waves of public opinion and the whims of the economy, that the UK do its part in the treatment programme and cut its emissions by 90% by 2030.
At first sight, this may seem a laughable target, but look at the alternative 80% by 2050 target. Don't you think there is something not quite ethical about demanding a target that we know will allow the earth and its people to suffer? A Christian climate change campaign cannot go along with this. It is not Operation Noah's job to consider what is politically possible, it is to stand with the vulnerable people and species and shout for righteousness and justice. Asking for less than this would be selling out to complacency, selling out to the world and its fallen structures.
The Bible has a few things to say about tough targets. Look at the Old Testament Prophets. They didn't temper their talk with platitudes to make it more acceptable to their targets. They didn't tell the Israelites to try not to be quite so idolatrous, that they understood the current culture was to worship foreign gods, so that's OK, they could worship the golden calf as long as they cut down a bit and made sure they paid a neighbouring country to worship Jehovah for them. This is not what the prophets said! They gave the people of the laughably tough target - to cease to do evil and to do justice. The world needs us to be prophetic and just say what needs to be done.
And in the New Testament too, we are called to impossible targets. Jesus' love took him to the cross, and yet his commandment to us is, "Love as I have loved." This is impossible. But our job is not to weigh up what is possible. It is to love as Jesus loved, to sacrifice everything for the other, including 90% of our CO2 emissions. As a Christian campaigning group this must be what we should be calling for.
Do you find, like me, that people often talk about balance - "You have to find the right balance" between living as we know we should and living as the world lives. "I always use my own string bag when I go shopping. My recycling bin is always full. But you know, I really need that holiday in Spain. You can't give up everything. You've got to find the right balance, haven't you?" I am not sure I agree with that, but I'm sure there should be no "balance" in what we demand from our government. As followers of Christ, we cannot balance what is politically convenient with what is scientifically and morally necessary. We cannot say: it's okay, we understand, billions of people and millions of species will be wiped from the face of the earth, but we understand it's easier politically to talk about plastic bags. We need to stop being so understanding! A boss when I had a proper job in California used to say the reason he was good at getting results was that he was too stupid to understand the problems. We need to keep focused on our vision of a sustainable, equitable, abundant earth and stop being so understanding of the obstacles in our way.
We need to be less understanding of the sludge of denial and ignorance that threatens to drown the future. We must speak the truth about this stuff despite and because of this denial. Look at the 2 degree target. I set up an Operation Noah group, and we visited our MP. He said, yes 2 degrees. European leaders all agree that global temperature rises must not exceed 2 degrees. But if you take a look at what is actually required to keep below two degrees, we are already at the global emissions level that could well take us above two degrees. And this is from the EU which is meant to be leading the world on climate change! Is this patent lies or unashamed ignorance? Whichever it is doesn't really matter. We cannot let our leaders get away with this. So far most of our politicians have given us nothing but fine words. And the vibrational energy level of CO2 module is not moved by fine words.
When asked whether he had considered holidaying closer to home rather than Barbados to send a message to the public, Tony Blair said, "But I personally think these things are a bit impractical, actually to expect people to do that." Let's look at what's a bit impractical: to expect people not to fly on holiday or to expect the vibrational energy state of CO2 not to absorb IR radiation, or water not to evaporate when you heat it, or ice not to melt when it gets hot? We need to get people to understand the political realities are necessarily softer than physical realities.
The physicist Paul Davis in an address on "Physics and the Mind of God" said, "To me, the true miracle of nature is to be found in the ingenious and unswerving lawfulness of the cosmos, a lawfulness that permits complex order to emerge from chaos, life to emerge from inanimate matter, and consciousness to emerge from life without the need for the occasional supernatural prod; a lawfulness that produces beings who not only ask great questions of existence but who, through science and other methods of enquiry, are even beginning to find answers." It is through the laws and the lawfulness of the cosmos that God has brought life into existence, and humanity is putting these laws to the test, hoping them to bend in deference to the laws of short-term economics. Put to the test, these same laws that brought life to the universe threaten to extinguish so much of that life.
But there is still time. The earth is still calling out for courageous leadership. The Climate Change Bill is being discussed now. You all know that nothing else matters. I know, I know - I'll be pushing Christian Aid envelopes through letter boxes tomorrow too. It's part of our discipleship. But you all know that pushing our government on climate change has just got to trump everything else. We must call upon our leaders to be leaders and to administer the UK's portion of the treatment prescribed and demand a target of 90% cut by 2030 in the Climate Change Bill because this is the target that is both scientifically realistic and morally necessary.
Links:
[1] http://www.operationnoah.org/sites/default/files/meds_0.jpg